SOURCE: "Martial Looks at His World," The Classical Journal, Vol. XXIV, No. 5, February, 1929, pp. 361-73.

[In the essay below, originally delivered as a lecture in 1928, Spaeth evaluates Martial's opinion of four categories of first-century Roman professionals: physicians, teachers, lawyers, and poets.]

It has been observed by an eminent writer on Roman life and manners that our extant Latin literature is descended wholly from a sphere of society "which had more contempt than interest for the lower orders, the men who, day by day, tucked in their tunics behind the counter, or stood in apron and cap by their bench in the workshop, where nothing noble could be made, only the daily bread earned."¹ No doubt this reflection is largely true of the poet Martial, as of others; but in his case it deserves some qualification. For he did not view the lower ranks of society from the fixed standpoint of a die-hard aristocrat, nor did he reserve his abundant flow of derision to be expended on them only. His reach was far greater. He evinces a decided interest in the lower orders—usually not a sympathetic interest, to be sure, but the curiosity of one whose penchant it is to study life and to see it whole. In fact, he was interested in life at all levels. He took it as he found it, and wherever he sensed matter fit for quip or jest or stinging satire, he made use of it, generally regardless of whom he offended, in order, as he remarks, that life might be cognizant of its ways.² If his hand was stayed at all, it was only because of the fair prospect of a meal or of a new toga; and even then, if the prospect proved to be vain, his vitriolic pen moved faster than ever. Rich and poor, the high and the lowly, male and female—all were sharers both of his contempt and of his interest. It is just this candid treatment that makes of Martial's books such rich storehouses of valuable information on life and manners at Rome under the early Empire.

Now in writing his epigrams, the poet tells us, it was his purpose to spare the individual while he discussed his faults.³ As an earnest of this endeavor he makes use of assumed names to conceal—rather ineffectively, we imagine—real persons. With Martial, in most cases, the point of the epigram was everything; and the point could be achieved with a false name about as readily as with a true one, although, of course, the laugh was louder and longer when the reader recognized the actual persons. In such epigrams as these it would not be difficult for the author to express his opinions about an entire class by lampooning the weaknesses apparent in a fictitious member of that class. It will be my endeavor in this paper, from a serious study of his poems—insolfar as we can take them seriously—to present Martial's attitude and reaction toward certain of the professions of his day.

But at the outset we must needs be wary. We must bear in mind that Martial's opinions may be derived, in part at least, from the traditional attitude which he inherited from his predecessors and shared in common with his contemporaries. For, in spite of his Spanish origin, Martial was very much a Roman and was sensitive of Roman prejudices. Even as with us today there are certain occupations which are proverbially held in disrepute, so at Rome in Martial's day there were even more numerous vocations which the free-born Roman looked at askance and, moreover, with a feeling much more radical than ours in that it directly reflected the social conscience. In interviewing Martial for his opinions of various trades and professions we must also beware of unwarranted generalizations. Our poet would rather particularize than generalize. He never meant to typify the lawyer or the teacher or the doctor after the manner of a Theophrastus. In each profession, to be sure, he saw certain common traits and emphasized them; but always the individual members were to him like his own poems, "some good, some middling, and more bad" (I, 16). Within the circles with which he was most familiar he found men of varying habits and capacities, and he attacked follies and vices where they existed and meted out praise where he saw cause for it. Martial passed judgment on the man. This is partly the implication in his assertion that his page "smacks of humanity."⁴ He was a shrewd and searching discerner of human nature, the most variable of God's creations.

Rome in the first century of the Empire presents the appearance of a very busy city, in spite of the fact that it was not, in any strict sense, a manufacturing center and that its exports were negligible. But it was the administrative center of the Western World, and it had much to do to supply the needs of its own huge population. There existed a highly specialized division of labor, both skilled and unskilled, into many crafts and guilds. There were, moreover, merchants of different grades, a vast horde of professional entertainers of all sorts, and the higher professions with their different branches. But all of these were not equally or freely accessible to the true-born Roman. In a society where slaves and freedmen performed most of the drudgery it is natural to find that honest manual labor, in particular, was held in very low esteem. Under the Republic, especially, this attitude had been most exacting. There were then very few professional callings to which a Roman gentleman might direct his energies and at the same time preserve his social caste. A political career leading to the higher magistracies, gentleman farming, and the professions of the lawyer and the soldier just about made up the approved list. Many of what are today our highest callings were under the social ban. Ordinary banking was no noble occupation, a medical career was unheard of, teaching was not to be considered. Under the Empire the traditional Roman attitude tended to become modified and even to disappear as time went on, especially after the incoming of Christianity. But in Martial's day there was still much antilabor prejudice in the upper levels of Roman society, and of this we must take account if we are to evaluate the poet's own attitude at all correctly. Many a poverty-stricken proletarian chose to trust himself to the bounty of the state or the chance benevolence of wealthy patrons rather than turn an honest penny at a vocation that he considered beneath his Roman dignity. And many a knight, like Martial himself, as his funds decreased and his toga wore thin, preferred to preserve his proud and lofty station to recuperating his fortunes by dint of honest work. Even our poet could see the grim humor in this situation, though it is to be doubted whether he ever allowed himself much thought on the anomaly of it.

Martial makes mention, more or less casually, of upwards of sixty different occupations at Rome, ranging from magistrates and lawyers to actors, hucksters, and mule-drivers. He has merely touched upon the field, it is true; but the number and variety of the pursuits he has alluded to give an indication of the breadth of his interests. He rubbed elbows with men in all walks of life: none was too high or too low. Some draw from him no comment at all. Against others, such as auctioneers, barbers, cobblers, undertakers, and charioteers, his general reaction seems to be the bitter complaint that they have means and he has not. To one of Martial's inclinations, of course, this disparity was a grievous fault. But in others, like the doctor, the teacher, and the lawyer, he found more fruitful ground for laughter and contempt; and it is on these professions that we can best pass judgment along with him.

Doctors

Physicians of all kinds were among Martial's pet aversions. Here is one point at which he and the strait-laced Cato the Elder would have been in perfect accord. If we are to believe our poet, there was scarcely a member of the healing profession about whom it could not be said, in the words of Dryden, "for every inch that was not fool was rogue." The practitioner Herodes is caught with a stolen drinking-ladle (trulla) on his person and tries to get off with a quick evasion (IX, 96). A certain Baccara is running a heavy risk, thinks Martial, in entrusting the care of his person to a doctor who happens to be his rival in love (XI, 74). Diaulus the surgeon has become an undertaker's assistant. Well, remarks the poet, it isn't such a great change: he is still putting his patients to bed in his old effective way (I, 30, and 47)! Similarly, in another epigram, it is thought that a certain eye-specialist (opthalmicus) who has turned gladiator (oplomachus) is probably putting out no more eyes than he did before (VIII, 74). These epigrams are very significant as showing how little removed the medical profession was, at least in the opinion of Martial, from pursuits of the lowest rank. Then there is the professor-doctor Symmachus who stalks into the sick chamber attended by a host of a hundred eager learners. A hundred hands, chilled by the north wind, paw the patient. "I had no fever, Symmachus," wails Martial; "now I have" (V, 9). It is no wonder that Andragoras, though left in the best of health and spirits, is found dead in the morning, when a poetical autopsy discloses that he has seen Dr. Hermocrates in his dreams (VI, 53). Happy indeed is the man who can afford to point the finger of scorn at these rascals.⁵

In all the epigrams not a single individual emerges to redeem the profession from this general and utter condemnation. One other fact is puzzling. We are well informed elsewhere that, in spite of its low estate, the medical calling was often very profitable. Yet among the quite numerous physicians whom Martial mentions not one is singled out as the unworthy possessor of a superabundance of worldly riches. Here our poet must have nodded.

Teachers

From the doctor to the teacher is only a step. The pointed remark, found in the Greek writer Athenaeus (XV, 66), to the effect that "if there were no physicians there would be nothing more stupid than grammarians," might well have been made by Martial. In his youth his sunny disposition must have been clouded forever by some plagosus Orbilius or other; for certain it is that as an adult he has little time for the pedagogical tribe. A teacher's position at Rome in Martial's day was far from being an unadulterated joy. It was anything but honorable, and, except for a few outstanding instances, it was poorly paid. Martial is not alone, therefore, in painting a gloomy picture of it.

Some distinction should be made between the elementary teachers (the ludi magister and the grammaticus) and the teacher in the rhetorical school (rhetor). The former our poet seems to treat with utter contempt, not unmixed with bitterness; for the latter he appears to entertain a pitying disdain. In the first place, many an early morning's sleep is lost on account of the din which the elementary pedagogue and his curly-headed troop are wont to raise even before cockcrow (IX, 68; XII, 57, 4 f.). For if it isn't the tyrant's raucous voice that breaks the early silence,⁶ it is the resounding thwacks of his ferule as they fall athwart the anatomies of his luckless charges, louder than the ringing blows of the smith on his anvil or the thundering shouts of the amphitheater (IX, 68). This ferule, so hateful to the pupil, was the delight of the master, says Martial (XIV, 80). Perhaps it was an essential instrument of instruction where discipline was necessarily severe. How the poet shudders at the thought of his verses being dictated in blatant tones by some pompous pedagogue (VIII, 3,15).⁷ When Martial scornfully tells Cinnamus, once a barber but now a knight, that he is fit to become nothing else, not a teacher of rhetoric (rhetor) nor a secondary teacher (grammaticus) nor a primary teacher (ludi magister), does he mean to imply that these positions are low enough in the social scale but still above the reach of Cinnamus (VII, 64)? Teachers of rhetoric, in the person of Apollodotus, remind one of the proverbial absent-minded professor of more recent fiction. Having had difficulty in attaching the proper name to the proper face in the circle of his acquaintances, Apollodotus finally adopted the plan of writing down the names and learning them by heart. What a marvel it was when, without consulting his notes, he was able to greet Calpurnius extemporaneously (V, 21, 54)! Sabineius the rhetorician chilled the warm baths of Nero whenever he entered them (III, 25). Martial, be it understood, abhors all pedantry.⁸ He is not a bookish man himself; and so he advises one Lupus, who is anxious for the material success of his son, to steer clear of all teachers of grammar and of rhetoric and to let him have nothing to do with the books of Cicero and Vergil (V, 56). Such learning does not make for a profitable career.

In the face of this scornful utilitarian view, and of all that the poet has had to say in derision of teachers and teaching, it is reassuring to read the brief but honest tribute which he pays his countryman Quintilian, the most famous of all Roman rhetoricians—"Quintilian, illustrious guide of errant youth, glory of the Roman toga" (II, 90). It is but further evidence of his ability to detach himself from his prejudices and to view men as individuals, not as types.

Lawyers

The case is much the same with the legal profession. Whether in the form of the pleader (orator or patronus) or of the consulting barrister (iurisconsultus), this was the most distinguished of all the civil callings at Rome, alike honorable for the knight and senator, and the obvious road to eminence for the ambitious plebeian. The profession tended to become overcrowded under the Empire, when the craze for litigation had nearly reached the point of being a fashionable vice. Many noted writers in this period of Rome's history were members of the bar; such were Seneca, Suetonius, Quintilian, Fronto, and the two Plinys. But it is quite clear that Martial personally had no ambitions in this direction, in spite of the gratuitous but unwelcomed advice of certain of his acquaintances. For him the work of the lawyer involved too much noise and bustle, too much anxious responsibility, too much loss of sleep. "Let me have my days without lawsuits," is his curt judgment (II, 90, 10). His was not a legalistic nature.⁹

It is but natural, therefore, that Martial should find, among certain members of the bar, traits that called forth his laughter and his disgust. Here is a pompous fellow in the Forum, unduly impressed with the weighty responsibility of his station, as he dictates to a crowd of stenographers nearby and examines with a severe countenance the numerous documents that are thrust at him from all sides. The condescension of a cordial "How-do-you-do?" would be utterly impossible for him (V, 51). Then there is Postumus who, in pleading a case involving three lowly she-goats, rings the changes on all the mighty tribulations and past glories of Rome, like a veritable Fourth of July orator. "Now, Postumus," ventures the poet, cuttingly, "say something about my three she-goats!" (VI, 19).

Long-winded harangues seem to have been not uncommon. One Caecilianus, having been granted seven water clocks' allowance of time by the judge, is speaking long and furiously, ever and anon stopping to moisten his throat from a drinking flask. Martial suggests that Caecilianus might satisfy both his oratory and his thirst by drinking from the water clock (VI, 35). A certain Cinna takes ten hours to say nine whole words (VIII, 7). From which statement we are to infer that during most of the time allotted him he has rambled on but said nothing. On the other hand Naevolus has a habit of speaking only when everybody else is shouting and drowning him out, but he thinks himself a pleader nevertheless (I, 97).

Some lawyers, moreover, are not as independent professionally as they might be. Ponticus will undertake no case that offends the wealthy or influential (II, 32). No doubt the reason is that he is well aware of the most abundant source of his income. Under the Roman Republic a barrister was forbidden by law (the lex Cincia de donis et muneribus, of 204 B.C.) to collect stated fees from clients, and even under the Empire fees were permitted only up to a certain limit,¹⁰ but there were, usually, ample rewards forthcoming in the shape of gifts and legacies. In many individual cases the profession proved to be quite lucrative. Cicero, for example, was a man of considerable wealth. Martial makes frequent mention of the client's gifts to the lawyer, especially on the occasion of the Saturnalia.¹¹ Pannychius, as a suburban farmer, is buying products which, as a lawyer, he used to receive in such abundance that he sold them (XII, 72). In one epigram, however, our poet suggests that, sometimes at least, the monetary return was not so good. He attempts to dissuade his friend Sextus from coming to Rome to practice law by reminding him that neither Atestinus nor Civis, former lawyers, had earned his full rent (III, 38). But usually the testimony is quite otherwise. There is in another poem the old jest about the lawyer's charges that eat up the contested funds and leave the plaintiff in debt. "The judge is looking for his fee and the pleader for his. I advise you, Sextus, to pay your—creditor!" (II, 13). Cyperus, a former baker who is now pleading cases, aims to make the equivalent of $10,000 a year, a tidy income in Martial's day (VIII, 16). And elsewhere our poet laments that law is much more profitable than the pursuit of the Muses and none too gently hints that he would like to see the inequality removed.¹² Indeed, it was, no doubt, the general fact of the lawyer's good financial standing that established Martial on terms of amity with so many members of the profession and led him to maintain a respectful attitude toward them in spite of his natural antipathy to their work.

For it seems to be certain, from the testimony of his verses, that Martial numbered many friends among the lawyers of his day. We have already mentioned the high tribute that he pays to the Spanish Quintilian, barrister and rhetorician (II, 90). He has a similar warm regard for the younger Pliny, learned and eloquent member of the bar (X, 20). Pomponius Auctus, "steeped in law and versed in the many-sided practice of the gown," doubly merits the poet's esteem in that he is a fond admirer of his verse (VII, 51). The poet Silius Italicus was a noteworthy practitioner at law, Martial tells us admiringly, before he essayed the sacred art of poesy (VII, 63). Fronto, Maternus, Restitutus, and Rufinus are other representatives of the legal profession about whom or to whom he speaks in terms of affection and esteem. But the most notable recipient among the lawyers of Martial's complimentary remarks is the famous advocate Regulus. The poet felicitates him twice upon his narrow escape from death beneath a collapsed portico (I, 12 and 82), makes his scholarly renown comparable to his piety (I, 111), congratulates him upon his eloquence (VI, 64, 11) and his popularity (II, 74), and sketches a pretty picture of his son's admiration for the father's skill (VI, 38). But in view of Pliny's pronounced aversion for this same Regulus¹³—the sole mortal whom the gentle Pliny seems to have detested—we are a little sceptical of the genuineness of the feeling that called forth Martial's praise. In fact, with a man of Martial's character—or lack of character, as some would have it—there is always difficulty in deciding whether we are reading mere flattery or heartfelt esteem. But we should like to regard it as a safe assumption that in at least some of the cases which we have mentioned Martial entertained real friendship with lawyers, mostly on account of their outstanding personalities, but partly, we believe, because of the honorable Roman calling that our poet admired at the same time that he rejected it for himself.

Poets

With this we have approached the end of our excursion. We have glanced at a few of the Roman professions and have observed that the poet Martial gave but scant approval to any of them. What, then, our patient reader may justly ask, in the face of this sweeping negation, was Martial's own métier? To which question we might promptly reply—as Martial himself might have done—that a man with his innate nonchalance did not consider it essential to have any. But there was one pursuit that our poet cherished with all the earnestness of which he was capable. It was an avocation rather than a vocation, though with Martial it was both. I refer to the calling of authorship. On almost every other page of the Epigrams we can find evidence of the high regard in which he held good literature, especially poetry, and of the professional attitude that he maintained toward the literature of his day. He looked upon authorship as a trust which he must guard jealously and devotedly. The names of writers, from Homer down, whom he mentions with varying degrees of praise and affection would make a list tediously long.¹⁴ His favorite among the classic poets of bygone days is Catullus. But Martial is not merely a laudator temporis acti. In fact, he strongly resents the narrow attitude that can see nothing of literary excellence among the writings of the present (VIII, 69):

"You honour, Vacerra, the ancients alone,
And never praise poets unless dead and gone.
Your pardon, if unceremonious I seem,
But it's not worth while dying to gain your
 esteem."¹⁵

He has a high regard for the work of many of his literary contemporaries, notably Silius Italicus, Lucan, and Decianus, as well as a warm affection for them personally. Indeed, it is among literary men that Martial finds his truest friends.

But not all poets are worthy, any more than all school teachers are impossible; and Martial is as scathing in his denunciation of a poor poet as he is fulsome in his praise of a good one. To him a poor poet is a blot upon the escutcheon of the highest of all arts. He is especially severe in his judgment of plagiarizers—those numerous Mr. Faithfuls (Fidentanus), as he likes ironically to call them, who parade under false colors and win the applause that rightfully belongs to another (I, 38; II, 20).

Criticism of the right sort he welcomes and solicits, but the carping and quibbling fault-finding of those who have little or no adequate knowledge of poetry as an art moves him to stinging rejoinders:

"You damn every poem I write,
Yet publish not one of your own.
Now kindly let yours see the light,
Or else leave my damned ones alone."¹⁶

Anyway, as he says, he prefers that the dishes which he has served at his literary. repast should please the guests rather than the cooks (IX, 81).

Martial, as a poet, is thoroughly conscious of his own art and many times theorizes about the qualities of his epigrams—their subjects, their metres, their length, their freedom. Poets are the darlings of Apollo and the Muses, but they are not on that account freed from all responsibility for their work. Nor can they be successful bards unless they are afforded the leisure and financial independence that a wealthy patron can give them. A Maecenas plays a vital part in the success of a Vergil; and Martial continually complains that lack of the where-withal of leisure is the greatest obstacle in his path of ascent to the Parnassian heights.¹⁷ He is also experienced in all the hardships of a Grub-Street existence and bitterly laments that almost any trade is productive of greater material rewards than is the work of a poet.

In his own day many a successful bard is neglected and unsung. Men spend their praise on more worldly achievements than poetry. Fame comes late (I, 1, 6; V, 10). But the immortality which a true poet achieves is well worth all the tribulations which his mortal existence has cost him. His name will still ring in the ears of men when the perishable splendor of the world's Croesuses has passed away (X, 2). And so, in spite of all its hardships and inequalities, Martial never despairs of poetry as the highest of all possible callings for him. It has its sublime recompense. We can close no more fittingly than by listening to our poet as he replies proudly to a certain Callistratus whom the world has made wealthy (V, 13):

I am poor, I admit, and I always have been, Callistratus, and yet I am no unknown, unheralded knight; no, I am read by many in all parts of the world, and people say of me, "Look! There he is!" and what death has given to only a few, life has given to me. But your roof rests on a hundred columns, and your money chest keeps close guard on a freedman's wealth; broad acres of Syene on the Nile acknowledge you as master, and Gallic Parma clips for you numberless flocks. Such we are, you and I; but what I am you cannot be; what you are any one at all can be.

Notes

¹ Ludwig Friedländer, Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire, English translation: New York, E. P. Dutton and Co. (1908), I, 150.

² VIII, 3, 20: adgnoscat mores vita legatque suos. (The references in this paper are to W. M. Lindsay's edition, M. Val. Martialis Epigrammata: Oxford, The Clarendon Press (1902).)

³ X, 33, 10: parcere personis, dicere de vitiis.

⁴ X, 4, 10: hominem pagina nostra sapit.

⁵ Like Cotta, in VI, 70. With Martial VIII, 74 compare Anthologia Palatina XI, 115; with VI, 53 compare ibidem XI, 257.

⁶ V, 84, 2 (clamoso—magistro); VIII, 3, 15 (rauca voce); IX, 68, 11 (garrule).

⁷ Horace, too, it will be recalled, had gloomy forbodings of a similar fate; Epist. I, 20, 17 f.

⁸ Cf. X, 21.

⁹ For passages illustrative of this paragraph cf. I, 17; II, 30, 5 f; I, 49, 35; I, 97; III, 46, 7; IV, 8, 2; V, 20, 6; VIII, 67, 3.

¹⁰ The Emperor Claudius fixed it at 10,000 sesterces. Cf. Cicero, De Sen. 10; Ad Att. I, 20, 7; Tacitus, Ann. XI, 5, 7.

¹¹E.g. IV, 46; V, 16; VII, 72, 5; X, 87; XII, 72; XIV, 219.

¹² V, 16, 5 f.; cf. I, 17; II, 30, 5.

¹³ Cf. Epist. I, 5; II, 20; IV, 2, 7.

¹⁴ See Ludwig Friedlaender, M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammaton Libri: Leipzig, S. Hirzel (1886), II, 367-369 (Register 3, Autoren).

¹⁵ Marcus S. Dimsdale, A History of Latin Literature: New York, Appleton and Co. (1915), 473. Cf. Martial XI, 90.

¹⁶ I, 91, rendered by Paul Nixon, Martial and the Modern Epigram: New York, Longmans, Green, and Co. (1927), 131. See his A Roman Wit: Boston, Houghton, Mifflin Co. (1911), 12. (Unfortunately the latter book is now out of print).

¹⁷ I, 107; VIII, 55; XII, 3. Mr. T. R. Glover takes exception to this complaint of Martial (Studies in Virgil: London, Edward Arnold [1904], 26): "Martial was wrong; if any one man made Virgil, it was rather the barbarus than Maecenas, but all the king's horses and all the king's men, veterans and ministers, could never make a Virgil—least of all out of a Martial." See, too, Martial X, 58, 70; XI, 24.